


I’d Rip Apart Time For You (my love)

by Ros3mary



Category: IT - Stephen King
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon compliant language (swears), Fix-It, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, The Turtle (IT) CAN Help Us, Time Travel, Weird & whacky shit youve been warned
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:01:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21593470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ros3mary/pseuds/Ros3mary
Summary: "What the fuck," Richie says, loudly. At the telltale crack of a prepubescent voice he says again, louder, "What the fuck!"OR; Pennywise sends Richie back in time just as they kill him, essentially breaking time and  saving himself, and Richie's just not having it
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 240





	1. Richie

**Author's Note:**

> me, crying while watching the ending of It Chapter Two (2019) so I know how to write the beginning of my fix-it fic: i'm doing research... this is research..
> 
> Also important to know, instead of 27 years it was 30, I could not resist the pennywise is baby joke and thats a 2019 thing

Richie Tozier hates that fucking clown.

At any point in time, the past, present, or future, in any given dimension, let it always be true and known that Richie _hates_ that fucking clown. His tombstone could read "I Hate Pennywise" and it would be true. It would always be true.

His voice was raw from screaming at (bullying) the stupid fucking clown, and his back hurt from being Deadlight'd and dropped by the stupid fucking clown, and _Eddie Kaspbrak was bleeding out in some nasty-ass cave under Derry, FUCKING Maine_ because of the stupid. Fucking. Clown.

So, yeah. Richie hates that fucking clown.

Richie's thought process stutters when he's hit by the Deadlights, falters when Eddie leans over him with bright eyes, and roars to a screaming halt when a spiked clown tentacle pierces through Eddie's chest, picks him up, and tosses him away. He's been on autopilot for the last couple minutes, crouching by Eddie and not moving, even when the other four run off to (bully?) defeat Pennywise. 

He doesn't really remember how he ended up here, staring down at a melted, baby Pennywise, and everything beforehand seems blurry, and dominated by Eddie thoughts. But he does have the common sense to follow suit when the other Losers put their hands together, surrounding Mike's hand, surrounding Pennywise's heart. Richie can feel the manic, panicked tempo of the clown's heartbeat through his friend's fingers. 

"Look at you," The stupid fucking clown groans, smiling slyly even while he dies, "all.. grown.. up." He makes eye contact with Richie, his yellow eye twinkling, and Richie can see the Deadlights overhead reflected in that heterochromic gaze. Despite death and clowns, Richie thinks, probably deliriously, _No wonder that date with Ashley didn't work. She was heterochromic._

Richie wants to scream and rage and maybe piss his pants, but he stands still and behaves. As the clown laughs, albeit weakly, the five Losers standing squeeze their hands, and Pennywise's heart is sticky, warm, and disgusting where it meets Richie's hand. Pieces expel upwards, floating, and Pennywise's chuckles morph into pained whines.

Part of Richie wants to make a joke (maybe about how Pennywise is baby. That's popular right now, right?). Part of him wants to yell at Pennywise, or anything, really, and another part of him wants to rush to Eddie and let these fuckers take care of it themselves. The overwhelming majority of Richie is wired to follow Bill, though, and Bill is standing here, calm and still, and squeezing his fingers around Pennywise's heart, so Richie does the same thing. He kind of hates how whipped they all are for their leader, but what can you do?

Mostly, Richie feels dizzy and gross, and the edges of his vision are starting to seem blurrier than they should. It would be concerning, but Richie's felt dizzy and gross for the better part of his life, so he's not _too_ concerned.

The edges of Pennywise start to turn black and flaky, more goo floating upwards, and Richie swears to God the clown makes eye contact with him again. The Deadlights are swirling down towards them, bright and clear in Pennywise's eyes, and Richie is swept with a wave of dizziness.

"Oh, shit," Richie mutters, realizing what's happening. _Should not have made fucking eye contact,_ He thinks desperately as the Lights get closer, and Richie is gripped with such an intense feeling of lightheadedness that he thinks maybe he's floating? 

"Rich?" Someone asks, and then he loses consciousness. 

Richie can feel things again. The first thing he realizes is that it smells, _bad_ , and then he realizes he can wiggle his fingers. And all of his limbs. He has the strangest contradicting senses that he's just opened his eyes, and that they were open the whole time.

Either way, Richie is looking at someone's back, and in front of that someone, is Pennywise the clown, holding onto the lip of a sewer drain with both hands, yellow eyes shiny and bright.

He recognizes this scene instantly. Bill is holding something. A bat, maybe, or a fence post- but it doesn't matter. He raises it as if to hit Pennywise and the clown sinks down lower, just barely looking over at them all.

_Nonononononononono_

Pennywise's eyes slide over towards Richie, and he knows, that clown knows and he did it on purpose and Richie can tell because Pennywise winks at him, then his head opens and he makes a big ass show of "dying" before letting go and falling down the drain.

_Nonononononononono_

Bill grabs the edge of the sewer drain, and all the Losers (sans Richie, obviously, who's been as still as a statue since he- since he what? Arrived here? Woke up?) are huddling around him and peering over the side.

"What the fuck," Richie says, loudly. At the telltale crack of a prepubescent voice he says again, louder, "What the _fuck_!"

The Losers turn away from the drain and look at Richie with varying levels of concern, and Richie just might pass out.

"Stanley?" He asks, voice cracking, because of course he would ask. Stan's alive and standing there and looking at him, what the fuck? "Guys?"

Bill glances over at Stan, then back at Richie, and they all move towards him. "Are you okay?" Bill asks, not even stuttering, and Richie would be surprised but Bill hardly stuttered when he grew up, either, so he's not. 

"What the fuck," Richie whispers. His confused terror must show clear as fucking day on his face, because all his friends' hesitance drop and they move in for a group hug, which is cute, but totally not the time. "Guys! What the hell? Is anyone else here with me?"

He means, of course, if his adult friends are here. They’d all been standing together in that goddamn cistern, their hands overlapping, so maybe they’d all gone here- come back?? -together. Then again, Richie had been the only one to make direct eye contact, he thinks, the only one to see the Deadlights swirling lazy and blue above the Losers’ heads...

"We're all here," Bev says, her voice muffled because her face is pressed into Bill's shirt. "We're all okay, Richie."

"Okay, not Beverly," Richie says, pushing away from the group hug and stepping back. "Mike?" He asks hopefully, turning towards him, "you're here, right?"

Mike smiles wobbily, obviously trying to be supportive, but he looks so goddamn confused. "Yeah, Rich, like Bev said- we're okay."

"I know that!" Richie snaps, and he whirls on the next person. "Ben. Come on, man. Are you with me?" Met with a blank stare, Richie turns, "Bill?"

"Okay, what the fuck is going on with Richie?" Eddie cuts in suddenly, and his voice is so familiar, Richie feels like he could dream about the quick pace, the lilts, the tone for twenty-seven years. And he did, so. "He's probably going into, like, shock, fuck, we should check him for a concussion, or-or-or take him to the hospital, or something, fuck-"

"Jesus Christ," Richie interrupts, staring down at his hands. "Why the fuck are my hands so small?" His brain is scrambled and raw, and he’s confused and scared and alone, and his _hands are so fucking small-_

"We should get out of the s-s-s-sewers," Bill says, and Bev puts a hand on Richie's elbow, which is probably supposed to be comforting, and everyone nods. "You'll feel better when we get outs-s-side, Richie." Bill adds, smiling at him hopefully, and Richie just might pass out.

Richie pulls his arm away from Beverly, spins on his heel, and marches up to the sewer drain. "That's it! Get your ass back up here, you stupid fucking clown, fix this shit, or I swear to God I'll jump down there, I do _not_ want to be thirteen again and _where the fuck are my friends_!"

He's dimly aware of people pulling at him, but his blood is roaring in his ears. This can't be happening. It's actually impossible. Bev- Beverly saw things in the Deadlights, and Richie hadn't before, but maybe he's seeing things now? Maybe this is an illusion- a dream. 

"I gotta wake up," Richie starts mumbling, and he pulls his arms away from the people grabbing at him to start pinching his skin. It hurts. It feels real. "I gotta wake up, this is just a dream, I'm seeing shit, I got caught in the Deadlights again- twice- fuck, Eddie's gonna be so mad-"

"Richie!" Someone yells in his ear, and he flinches away, turning wide eyes towards the source. Bill is glaring at him. "You didn't get caw-caw-caught in the Deadlights," He says, slowly. "And you are a-w-wake, dipshi-it."

Richie laughs. "Oh my God," He says, and then he laughs some more. They're pulling at him again, and he goes willingly this time, too mentally exhausted to put up a fight. He's laughing the whole way as they go out of the sewers, Bev pulling his left arm, Stan pushing the small of his back, and Eddie tucked close enough to Richie's right side that he almost trips, several times.

The sunlight beats down on the road and the sunflowers outside of Neibolt house with a lazy honey-golden tranquility, as if unaware that things are so fucked. Things are fucked. Things are _awful._

The thought sobers Richie quickly, and his laughter tapers off as abruptly as it began. The rest of the Losers exchange nervous looks, and the glances they slip Richie scream "concerned".

 _Fuck,_ Richie thinks, _I need to stop panicking. If I were thirteen years old and they started acting like this, I'd be concerned too._

So he takes a deep, grounding breath, forces his hands to lay still and calm at his sides (they had been shaking) and he looks deep, deep, _deep_ inside himself for the 40+ year old adult attitude that's supposed to exist.

"Alright," Richie says, and everyone's eyes snap to him, "Listen up. I am from the future."

At his declaration, Ben laughs. The others look at him, then laugh too, more nervously. Eddie is silent. 

"Why are you fuckers laughing at me?" Richie has to demand, glaring at them.

"I get it," Ben says. "It's a bit. You're trying to freak us out, right?" He looks so innocent, smiling at Richie earnestly, and he's got that familiar twinge of hopefulness in his eyes because no matter how little he'd admit it, Ben needs validation. He needs to be reminded he's not lonely.

"Fuck, you're adorable, Ben, goddamn," Richie groans, dragging his palm up his face and into his hair. His glasses, which are stupidly thick and nerdy-looking, fall off and onto the ground, amidst the yellow grass and sunflower stalks. "And you get hot too, what the hell, Bev, you lucky bitch."

"Me?" Bev squeaks. Her red-white blob seems confused, and a little flustered, maybe.

"January embers, you oblivious idiots," Richie snaps. "Eds, can you hand me my glasses, please?" He asks, holding out his hand. Eddie drops the glasses into his open palm silently, because as soon as they'd been knocked away he'd stooped and picked them up. 

When he can see again, he can see Bev and Ben staring at each other, Bev's expression unreadable, and Ben beet red. 

"January embers?" Bev whispers.

Ben flushes deeper, and says back, just as hushed, "My heart burns there too," and refuses to meet Beverly's gaze.

Richie groans. "Alright, we all ship Benverly, you dense fucks, can we move on to the time-travel thing?"

"Ship?" Stan asks.

" _Benverly?_ " Bev repeats.

"Time-travel." Bill says, flatly.

"Yes, those are all things I said," Richie should get a goddamn award for patience at this point. "And all you fuckers need to stop talking back to me, respect your elders."

"You're the same age as us," Stan responds calmly, automatically.

"I'm _fucking forty-three_!" Richie yells, throwing his hands up. "I come from the great year of 2019, and we had just defeated that stupid fucking clown when it got me in the Deadlights, and now I'm here, and you won't listen to me!"

They all seem shocked at his outburst. Bill opens his mouth, probably to be a little _bitch_ again, but Mike beats him to it. "How can we believe you?" He asks, calmly, ever the voice of reason. The others (sans Richie, who is looking relieved that he's not just talking back) look at him incredulously. He shrugs and says, "Weirder things have happened I guess, but how do we know you're not fucking with us?"

Everyone looks back at Richie. He's silent for a few moments, thinking. "I'll tell you the secrets that thirteen-year old me was too chicken shit to spill.” Richie finally answers.

"S-s-secrets?" Bill scoffs, "Richie, you're the loudest motherfucker we know, you c-c-can't keep a secret."

"Yes I can," Richie replies evenly, and something in his genuine, open tone makes them pay attention. "Here's the first one: I'm gay."

Silence. 

"And the crowd goes wild," Richie says dryly. "Here's the second one: I'm scared, all the time, of everything, and that's why I joke a lot, to hide my insecurities."

That is _not_ something that Richie 'Trashmouth' Tozier would say calmly under the summer sun surrounded by sunflowers, and even if the others had their suspicions about him, they know he wouldn't admit it like that, so now they know for sure something is Up with a capital "u". 

"Here's the third one: I'm in love with Eddie," He concludes, pointing at thirteen-year old Eddie. That's the only one that makes him feel real fear, but it doesn't matter because A; This is most likely a Deadlights-induced hallucination, B; Real Eddie is probably dead (and that hurts, that hurts, that _hurts_ ) and finally C; There's a large chance they won't believe him anyways. 

Nevertheless, that announcement is the only one that gets feedback. Instantly they erupt into talking, Eddie's ear-shattering " _WHAT_ " slicing through it all.

Mike, Stan, and Ben look convinced; Bev looks confused; Bill seems skeptical, and Eddie looks on the verge of a panic attack, or maybe tears? It's confusing. 

It’s mostly overlapping gibberish right now, and for some weird reason it reminds Richie of an ocean tide, waves reaching up to kiss at the beach, one after the other, over and on top of each other, calming and chaotic. Richie is both annoyed as fuck that these idiots don’t believe, don’t trust him, and so happy to hear their voices like that he could weep. 

"Do you stupid fuckers believe me now?" Richie snaps with no heat, just raising an eyebrow at them all. 

"You- I-" Eddie stammers, helpfully.

Ben rushes to say, "I believe you!" and that's predictable. He really was so innocent. 

"It's possible," Is what Mike settles on, looking deep in thought.

"If you need more proof, I have gay porn under my bed, and a notebook full of Eddie's name, hearts, and little sketches of him in his shorts," Richie suggests. Eddie looks like he might pass out.

“That’s not necessary,” Stan says, deadpan, and Richie snorts.

“Fine, but do you all believe me now?” He asks, and everyone stares at each other.

“Can we get out of here?” Ben deflects, asking politely, staring pointedly at the withering house behind Richie. “It’s creepy, and gross.”

“Yeah, let’s g-g-go,” Bill jumps in eagerly, spinning on his heel and walking towards the road.

“I feel like my issue is a very pressing one,” Richie complains, loudly, “but if you guys wanna go we could go look at my gay porn.”

Instantly, he’s met with groans, and Stan sighs, “Beep beep, Richie,” then pauses, looks contemplatively at Richie, and follows it up with, “I believe you.”

“Nice! High five,” Richie crows with a grin, holding his hand up. Stan stares at him and doesn’t give him a high five. “Also, I love you, and please don’t kill yourself.” 

“I’m choosing to ignore that last part, for now,” Stanley says, slowly, talking as usual as if Richie is a five year old child and it’s so comforting. “You love me?” He adds, looking a little- uncomfortable? Stan’s gaze slides towards Eddie, then flicks back to Richie, and Richie groans.

“Come on, dude,” Richie mutters, massaging his temples with one hand, fingers stretched out. “Don’t make this fucking weird. Just ‘cause I’m gay doesn’t mean I want to fuck all of you. Besides, you’re not my type.”

“Eddie’s your type?” Stan asks, even slower. Everyone is watching this interaction, and they seem like they’re on their metaphorical tip-toes, arching up away from the eggshells that is RichieandEddie. 

“I used to tell you guys he’s cute, like, every day.” Richie deadpans, sending them all his flattest look. “Like, I could not have been more obvious.”

“Richie.” Eddie says, suddenly, low and strained. His voice sounds taut like a string, so close to snapping, and Richie is instantly concerned. His gaze whips towards him, and fear worms into his chest again, annoyingly. 

_This is a dream._ Richie reminds himself. _Pennywise knows how to get in your head. Don’t be afraid, that’s what he wants._ Swallowing down the lump forming in his throat and trying to be brave for once in his life, he croaks out, “Yeah, Eds?”

“Shut up.” Eddie snaps. “Shut the fuck up.”

His eyes are blazing. Richie’s heart sinks down into his toes, and probably drops out altogether. He keeps his eyes carefully away, afraid of seeing his heart splattered all over the concrete. Pennywise would. “Damn, Spaghetti.” He jokes awkwardly, wondering if his devastation is sprawled obviously on his face. (It is.) “Didn’t take you for a homophobe.”

“Stop.” Eddie hisses, his voice low and dangerous again, and Richie bites his tongue so hard he tastes iron. 

Suddenly spinning on his heel to face forward again, Richie plows ahead, taking the lead. “Let’s hurry up, please,” He tries to suggest mildly, as if he doesn’t care, but he mostly sounds congested and scared. “I want to go back to 2019. Fuck the ‘90s, I miss gay rights.”

Ben laughs once, very nervously, bless his soul, and the rest of the walk to Bill’s house is silent. 

As it turns out, it is possible for Richie to hate something more than he hates Pennywise. 

Richie Tozier hates fucking time travel.


	2. Beverly

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> erb's joker vs pennywise rap blessed my soul, watered my crops, and cleared my skin. 10/10 recommendation

“Oh, shit.”

Bev snaps her eyes away from It’s heart and looks at Richie, concern and fear (too much of that nowadays) worming into her heart. “Rich?” She asks, worry bleeding into her tone.

They won. They were in the process of winning. Why did Richie sound so dizzy and scared?

Then, without warning, Richie collapses. 

Everyone starts shouting. Bev manages to pull her hand away, and so does Ben, she sees when she looks wildly over at him, but Bill and Mike are tugged down like dominoes, their hands still interlaced with Richie’s.

Bill and Mike’s exclamations are wordless with surprise, Ben, (the poor baby) is yelling, “What the frick!”, and Bev’s squeal of fear is breathless and high.

“Rich! Richie!” Bill says, rocketing into a seated position, from where he'd landed partially on top of Richie. He pulls his hand away from Richie’s to carefully lift his head up, clearly looking for blood, fingers roaming through Richie's knotted hair. 

Mike, who had fallen to the side and knocked his head on a spike, groans and pushes up, leaning against the dark grey spike thing. “What’s happening? I thought we won,” He says, looking at Richie with plain fear scrawled into his face.

“Guys?” 

Bev turns instantly, getting whiplash from how fast her head snaps towards Ben.

Ben is a sickly ash color, staring down at the ground. 

“Where’s It?”

Everyone shuts up and looks down. It’s gone. Bev’s eyes water, the force of her fear slamming into her chest, and she backs up, right into a jutting spike of meteor, almost falling as she stumbles from the sloppy impact. “No,” She whispers, so strained it’s barely a breath.

“... Shit.” Bill says. He’s on his knees still at an unconscious Richie’s side, cradling the man’s head. 

Totally unexpectedly, a sob tears out of Mike’s chest. Bev turns to him, and she thinks dimly to herself that she’s going to break her neck if this keeps up. “I’m sorry,” Mike says, slinking down against the spike until’s he’s sitting. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I killed everyone. It’s my fault. I should have known- should have known that we couldn’t beat It again- I killed you all, I’m so sorry.”

“Mike,” Bev says, wanting to go to him but still paralyzed with her fear.

“Yuh-you didn’t kill us,” Bill says firmly. “It is _not_ your fault.”

“Stan,” Mike gasps. He’s crying, tear-tracks barreling through the grime on his face, eyes wide with devastation as he stares at their leader. “Eddie. Richie.” 

“Richie’s not dead,” Bill says. His fingertips are pressed into Richie’s pulse-point, Bev realizes. Maybe he can feel it jumping under the pencil-calloused pads of his fingers. 

“You would have done it better,” Mike whimpers back. Bev moves instantly, shelving her fear, more concerned with Mike's tone- a mix of self loathing and despair, sitting down by Mike and bury her face into his shoulder, but she doesn’t speak. She hopes her presence, her support, is enough for now. “I- I’m not the leader, I was so stupid for thinking I could lead you guys, and now I’ve killed you.”

“Stop it,” Bill snaps. “Richie just fainted. We don’t know if Eddie’s dead. And Stan-? How could you have known what Stan was going to do? That was his choice.” Bill gently puts Richie’s head down, and reaches over to grab Mike’s hand. “That’s part of being a leader. Letting the people who follow you make their own choices. It doesn’t mean it’s your fault, Mike.”

“But- I should have done better,” Mike protests weakly, sniffling as he stares down at Bill's slender writer fingers twined around his own, sturdier from the farm work that painted his past in broad strokes. Bev watches them both carefully with one eye, half her face pressed into Mike's dirty shirt.

“You better shut the fuck up,” Bill warns, without heat. “I don't want to hear any more of that s-s-s-sh-s-,” He shakes his head once, hard, and tries again. “ _Bull_ shit. Okay? You got us here. You did amazing.”

Before Mike can trash talk himself again, Bev speaks up, too. “He's right, Mike,” She says softly. “You know you did your best. _We_ know you did your best, too, and that's all we ask of you.”

“Guys," Ben says, again, sounding strained. “Should we... go check on Eddie?”

“Fuck, you're right, goddamnit," Mike bursts, standing up so fast Bev almost tips over. “I should have- sorry, let's go check on him, come on.”

“Stop apologizing,” Bill says. “I'll stay here with Rich, just in case, you guys go.”

Mike nods, and tears off in the direction that they left Eddie in. Ben and Bev are hot on his heels. 

Eddie is exactly where they left him, propped up against a rock, holding Richie's leather jacket to his chest, chin slumped down to his chest. He's not moving.

"Take his pulse," Bev says breathlessly. Mike drops down by Eddie's side, tilting his head up and pressing his fingers gently against Eddie's neck. 

The cavern is dangerously silent for a heartbeat. Another. Bev can feel her heart pounding in her throat. Mike pulls his hands away from Eddie, letting the other's head slump down again, and looks up at Ben and Bev with teary eyes. Wordlessly, he shakes his head.

"Fuck!" Ben explodes, making Bev jump and flinch. Ben stomps forward, and Bev instinctively cringes away, backing into the wall. Ben just looks so angry- hands clenched into shaking fists- just like Tom, before he'd- he'd-

But Ben walks right past Bev, crouching down to gently lift Eddie's body, bridal style. Eddie's head lolls back lifelessly.

Bev stays where she is, watching Ben stalk down the rock incline, down to where Bill and Richie are. He's shaking with anger, and grief, probably, but it's completely contradicted by the way he tenderly holds the body of one of his oldest friends. Bev can't help but wonder at it, think about how he might hold her, and a life free of bruises and flinches flits past her wide eyes.

Something touches her shoulder and she does just that, recoiling into the wall, but she lets out a tight exhale when she looks and it's just Mike, comfortingly ghosting his hand against her skin. "Sorry, I.." Mike starts, and Bev shakes her head, stepping forward and yanking him into a hug.

He hesitates, then hugs back, and Bev sighs, sagging against him. She's just so _tired._

It only lasts for a few seconds. They smile at each other when they pull away, faces just slightly more relaxed, and they turn and jog down to where everyone else is before they miss anything important.

Bill is crying silently, his hand covering his mouth. Ben is propping Eddie up so gently against a spike, sighing as he settles in next to him, legs stretched out. Eddie's body slumps, his head falling against Ben's shoulder, and Ben doesn't even flinch.

"I stayed with him," Ben says, staring at his hands. "When he- when we met, Bill, remember?" He doesn't look up, doesn't see the flash of memory in Bill's eyes, or the way he nods, hand falling. "I should have stayed with him again." Ben continues, voice dropping into a whisper.

"Fuck that," Bev snaps. Everyone turns to stare at her wide-eyed, probably at the vehemence in her voice. "You all need to stop fucking blaming yourselves. I've had enough of that for a lifetime from myself, okay? Fucking stop it."

Ben's expression melts, and his sad eyes fall onto the bruise on her forearm. "Okay, Bev." He says softly. "Whatever you want."

Bev sighs as she sits down, her knees tucked neatly under her, and she thinks that Ben probably means that, too. She doesn't know what to do with it. Tom hadn't loved her, he'd just expected of her, and Bev knew how to handle that. She knew how to try to be good and listen, and stop smoking when he told her to, and lay down and take it when he decided to hit her. This love from Ben? It's new and it's scary.

It's silent as Mike sits down beside Beverly, and they all just stare at each other for a long minute or so.

"How's Rich?" Bev asks finally, shattering the silence under the weight of her voice, and Bill starts slightly, reaching out to feel Richie's pulse again.

With a soft exhale of relief, Bill pulls his hand away. "He's fine. What happened to him?"

"I'd say he just fainted," Mike says, a little line between his eyebrows as he looks at Richie, "but It's gone. It was probably It's doing."

Bev sighs tightly through her nose, drumming her bitten-down nails on her jeans. "What do we do now?"

"We need to get out of huh-huh-here," Bill stammers out. He's tapping his toes on the ground, seemingly just as anxious as Beverly. 

"We're not leaving them," Bev says hotly. 

Bill raises his palms in a surrendering gesture. "I didn't say that."

Bev sighs, again, cradling her temples in her hands. "I'm sorry, Bill, I'm just- well, you know," She drops her hands into her lap to smile bitterly at Bill, and he nods, all understanding. "We should- well. There doesn't seem to be any danger as of now. We should wait for Richie to wake up."

"That could be hours from now," Mike protests, skimming his fingers against Bev's arm soothingly. 

"Can we carry both of them?" Bev says back, looking towards Mike to meet his dark eyes.

"I can carry Eddie," Ben says. Bev turns to him, and his warm eyes are so, so sad. "Bill and Mike, if you could carry Richie..."

Bill and Mike nod instantly, and Bev stands, brushing her knees off. "Well. Then let's go. I hate it down here."

_**Stay.** _

Bev screams, flinging her hands up to her mouth. Mike startles, jumping to his feet. Ben yells out wordlessly too, his eyes wide, his voice deep against the falsetto of Bev's. 

The voice seemed to have come from everywhere and nowhere. Bev can't remember a time when It had sounded like that.

"What- what the fuck," Beverly says, her voice trembling, and her hands shaking just as bad when she lowered her hands.

**_You have to wait._ **

"Oh my guh-guh-guh-guh-" Bill's face turns red as he stammers and stammers, trying to get the word out, before he just gives up and shuts his mouth with an audible click.

"Oh my god," Mike says for him. He's staring straight up into the cavern's tooth-lined dome roof, where the Deadlights had been.

Bev follows his gaze warily, and finds herself looking into a huge eye. It's all stars and galaxies, except for the pupil, which is the deepest, darkest black that Bev has ever seen, and she's sure it's the blackest black to exist.

"What," She whispers.

Bill and Ben look up, too, and everyone goes still and silent, like rabbits, lit up white not with a car's headlights but with their own pale fear.

"... Maturin?" Mike finally asks.

**_Yes. You must wait._ **

"Wait for what?" Mike questions. Bev is glad he can talk, because she's still gaping like a fish. 

**_For the loud one._ **

The eye's pupil seems to move, focus on Richie, but it's so big it's hard to tell. 

"Richie?" 

**_Yes._ **

"Where is he?" Bev shouts suddenly, finding her voice in a flash. She feels in her bones that he's not here, but she can't explain it. "Where is he?"

**_It is much to explain._ **

"Then explain!" Bev yells. Mike elbows her ribs, and she looks down at him, sees the slight panic in his dark eyes. He shakes his head, and mouths 'God' at her.

 _That eye is God?_ Bev thinks. She feels faint. She might faint.

**_Fine. The loud one saw what you call the Deadlights, not as they were manipulated by my brother, but as they Are. He went back to the first summer._ **

"The first summer? The first time we killed It?" Bill asks. His voice is soft, and it sounds shivery. Bev reflects on her past choices, wondering how the fuck she got here.

 ** _When you put my brother to sleep._** The eye says, firm and certain. It's voice is so- well, Bev doesn't think there's a word for it. If she had to explain, she'd say it sounds like it Knows, capital “k”. She feels compelled to listen.

“He’ll come back for us?” Bev asks, not bothering to try and hide her worry. She doesn’t doubt Richie’s character, she just doubts his ability. Fuck, that sounds awful.

 _**He is fighting for you.**_ The eye says. (Bev feels reluctant to call the eye it; too close to It.) **_He is fighting for the sick one, too._** The eye adds, it's attention seeming to shift to Eddie's body.

"He is not sick," Ben spits, covering one of Eddie's small hands with his. 

A sort of hesitance comes from the eye. **_The small one, then._**

"The brave one," Bev says. Another pause emits from the eye. 

_**The brave one.**_ The eye concedes, and it sounds slightly pleased, if that's possible.

"Will he guh-get him back?" Bill asks. He's crouched halfway over Richie's sleeping form, as if protecting him. Bev looks at this, then looks at Ben, who's letting Eddie's bloody body rest against his side, covering Eddie's hands. Her heart swells with love for them all. 

_**I can not see that.** _

"What- what do we do?" Mike says, almost a shout. "What can we do?"

**_You can wait._ **

"Richie has to do it alone?"

**_He is not alone. I will be guiding him, and he saw the Lights. As they Are._ **

"What does that _mean_?" Mike's voice cracks, his desperation to help his friend leaking through. Again, Bev is rushed with a wave of love. _We care. We care so much, Richie, if you're out there._

_**The Lights... are power. My brother manipulated them to do evil. The Lights are not evil nor good, they just Are. Your friend, the loud one, he saw them as they Are and for it he has some of their power. A gift, you could say. My brother will fight him every step of the way, but I will guide him every step. My brother has been here too long. You can do nothing but wait. My brother broke this timeline. If you go outside of this cistern you will see, everything is still and grey. There is no time out there. I gave you time in here, so you must stay. If you go out there, you will become still and grey too. If you stay here, you will not suffer from your normal human functions. Just wait. The loud one will know what to do, when he comes for you.** _

"I'm so confused," Ben admits, sounding very upset about it. "We just wait here? For Richie to do all the work himself?"

_**You will get a chance to help him. He has to find you first. Just wait.** _

"There's really nothing we can do?" Bev asks. There's no answer, and when she looks up again, the eye is gone. It's just the cave roof of the cistern again. "Fuck. Fuck! This is so fucked up."

"Mike w-who was that? What was that?" 

Mike drops into a seated position again, sighing heavily as he leans back against a spike. "Maturin. He's a turtle, and a god, and It's brother."

"I hate this. I hate all of this." Ben blurts. His eyes are filled with desperate anger, and he looks furious at being so helpless.

Bill reaches out and touches Ben's shoulder soothingly, looking equally angry, but holding it in. "It's okay. I believe in Richie, don't you?"

"Of course I do!" Ben exhales, his hand flying up to move expressively and angrily through the air. "I just- I want to- we should be helping him! We should be together." His voice pitches down and he drops his hands. The body shift causes Eddie's body to move, slumping forward, and Ben makes a distressed sound, steadying the body. "It's okay, Bill will be back with your medicine soon," He says.

"Ben." 

Ben makes a sound deep in his throat, tilting his head back against the spike he was leaned against. "I know, Bill, I'm sorry. I just- the memory was so vivid, I thought for a second.. just a second. I'm fine."

"We're all gonna be okay," Mike says. He's staring at his hands, looking vaguely disconnected, and it sounds more like he's saying it to himself than anything else.

Bill grunts softly, a little noise of confirmation, and then lays down beside Richie, stretching out. His hand reaches down, fingers interlacing with Richie's. Ben gently moves Eddie's body till it's laying down, then lays on the other side of Richie, slightly curled up since there's hardly any room. Mike pulls his knees up to his chest and stays silent after that. He looks like he's dissociating. Bev makes a mental note to keep an eye on him in case it gets worse.

Beverly sighs as she settles down Indian style, her knees knocking against Bill's feet. "I guess now we wait. Come through, Richie."


	3. Richie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the chapter two recap but it's important how richie tells it! you guys know all that shit already though sorry lmao
> 
> also it's gonna seem like stan has a crush on richie throughout this, if you're into that go ahead and project but it's not true here sorry stozier stans

Bill's room isn't really big enough to comfortably fit all seven of the Losers Club members, but the only place bigger and just as private is his basement, and on silent agreement they decidedly do not go to Bill's basement.

Several minutes of awkward silence ensue after they all settle somewhere. Richie is on the bed, sat on middle edge, hands folded almost serenely in his lap as he thinks (probably harder than he has in his entire life). Bill is leaning against the headboard, legs pulled up in front of his chest like a shield. Bev and Ben are sitting just close enough for it to be edging out of platonic on the floor, Stan is perched on Bill's desk chair, Mike is leaning against the wall by the door and Eddie sat down near the closet, across the room from the bed, about as far from Richie as you can get. Richie pretends valiantly to act like he isn't being physically crushed by the weight of his emotions. (He fails.)

"So," Mike finally prompts. Richie's eyes lift to him, but don't clear. He would like to say he's thinking hard about like, morality, or how to fix this, but he's mostly been replaying Eddie being impaled over and over in his head until he feels dizzy and sick. "You time traveled. Let's say you actually did," he raises a finger before Richie can grumble back, "and just discuss it for now. What happened before you.. got here?"

"I told you," Richie says, "I was- we were killing It, and I looked into It's eyes, and I saw the Deadlights reflected and got all dizzy and passed out, then I saw Bill and It down in the sewers."

"Wait, go back," Stan says as soon as Richie stops talking, "We were killing It? Isn't It dead? Didn't we just do that?"

"No," Richie replies, wondering how bluntly to put it. "First off, you and Eddie weren't killing It, the rest of us were. Secondly, we only put It to sleep just now. Well, we did last time- when I was here, when I was actually thirteen. I don't think It's asleep right now."

Bill's legs pull down until he's sitting Indian style, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "Explain all of that." He demands. "No, explain l-l-literally every single thing you kn-kn-kn-kn-know."

"Paraphrase, please, I don't want to be here all day," Bev chirps. Her hand is awfully close to Ben's, palm flat on the ground.

"How much do you think Richie knows?" Stan grumbles back, and nobody even laughs, that's how tense it is.

Richie sighs, tilts his chin up to stare at the ceiling, and rattles things off as fast as he can remember, and as shortly as he can phrase it. "Let's see- Mike stays in Derry, It wakes up thirty years from now, he tells us all to come back. Stan kills himself instead, Eddie's married to his mom and Bev's married to her dad but like nobody talks about it, we go out to eat and- how broad do you guys want this shit, fuck - So Mike says something, and Bev says "Pennywise" all dramatically and we all remembered. Oh, yeah! When you leave Derry you forget everything- we all forgot each other. And uh, so yeah she says that and we remember, then our fortune cookies go bat shit and attack us. I yelled at some kid- not important, sorry, I'm rambling- Mike takes us to the clubhouse, we see Stan's stupid fucking shower caps and get sad, I make a dumb joke and you guys get mad, or something, actually that was before the shower caps, sorry. Mike starts spouting shit about a ritual and we all go off separately to get 'tokens' or whatever, something important to our past or something I don't remember.

"That was, uhh, after Mike drugs Bill by the way. Then we go down to the cistern, I think? No, then Bill goes after the kid I yelled at, I think it was the same kid, and he says he's gonna fight It alone again 'cause he's a fucking idiot, the kid dies, sorry. At some point Bowers gets out of the mental asylum thing and stabs Eddie in the face so I kill him, duh. I also threw up, not important. Then we go down to the cistern and the ritual doesn't work because Mike's a fucking liar, and we all get separated and go through some shit- Eddie and I saw like, a dog and the closets again, remember Bill? Fuck I'm rambling so bad sorry this is a lot of shit okay, it would be like a two hour movie at _least-_ So anyways, uh, I get caught in the Deadlights and Eddie- fuck, Eddie saves me, but-" At this point, Richie has to squeeze his eyes closed, and tilt his head up just a little more, because he thinks looking up is supposed to stop crying, or something.

After a moment, when he can continue, Richie says, "Uh, sorry. Eddie gets- impaled. And thrown across the cave. We go to him, and you know- hide from It. He talked about choking It, or making it small, and someone says there are ways to make people small so Bill, Mike, Ben and Bev go off to yell at It or something, I don't know I stayed with Eddie, then you guys make It really small and weak and so I go over and Mike pulls out It's heart and we all put our hands together to crush it." He's taking deep, shuddering breaths, and a dangerous silence is dancing over their heads. He doesn't like it at all. He doesn't open his eyes.

This feels like another one of his goddamn therapy sessions that he used to take. Richie hates talking, hates spilling his heart out like this, and above all he hates being vulnerable. He's also _incredibly_ bad at doing all of the above, especially when you can't remember why you're so sad, scared, and hollow. Try explaining that to someone one day, then come back and talk to Richie.

"So yeah, at this point, the Deadlights are above our heads, and they're blue for some reason, I think. It makes eye contact with me, and I see the Deadlights reflected in It's eyes, and I pass out."

He finishes with a hard swallow. His throat feels raw, even though as a comedian he's talked for much longer at a time, and his eyes are still blurry with tears. 

Finally looking back down and opening his eyes, Richie takes in all his friends' expressions. Mostly scared. Somewhat confused. Then Richie makes eye contact with Eddie, across the room, and Eddie looks fucking terrified.

Exactly how he looked, the same exact face, as when a spike was being shoved through his chest, blood splattering on Richie's face, chest, burning, and Eddie was scared-

Richie can't hold it back anymore. He puts his elbows on his knees, his face in his hands, and he bursts out sobbing.

It's the worst, ugliest crying he's ever done, and he's a little shocked to hear it from himself. Each ragged sob sounds like it's being ripped out of his chest, and it's fucking awful. 

Minute gasps sweep through the room, then Bill is sitting up and rubbing Richie's shoulder, Bev is laying a hand on his knee, Mike sits down next to Richie and presses slow circles into his upper back. Richie just cries harder, twisting his head away and burying his face in Bill's chest. "He fucking _dies,_ Bill, and I can't do shit about it," He cries, still sobbing, ugly and awful and real. Richie can't remember the last time his chest hurt so bad emotionally, had forgotten how it felt to have your heart shatter like glass in your chest, and he yearns for a glass of liquor, and he'd give anything to hide in the all-consuming apathy he used to hate. "I loved him, I loved him so fucking much, and he gets stabbed right on top of me, I had his blood crusted into the cracks of my glasses." 

His words sound nonsensical even to him, and when he tries to grasp at a thought, any singular, coherent thought, they slip and twist away from him like ribbons. All he knows is pain and Eddie is dead.

He doesn't know how many minutes tick away like that, surrounded by his favorite people in the world (minus one, and shit if that doesn't hurt), crying the worst he's ever cried and slurring half-thought bullshit about Eddie into Big Bill's chest.

Eventually he realizes the arms wrapped around him are Bill's, there are at least two different people's hands on his legs, rubbing soothing circles into his jeans, someone is hugging him from behind, and someone is sitting at his side on the bed near the windowsill, face buried in his shoulder.

Richie bites his lip, hard, and pulls away, sniffling and rubbing at his eyes under his thick, god-awful glasses. "Sorry," He slurs slightly, rubbing at his nose. "I'm sorry, guys."

"F-f-f-fuck, dude, I buh-buh-believe you now," Bill says, just as Ben says "Don't be sorry!" and Mike murmurs, "Never thought I'd see Trashmouth cry."

"Why aren't you crying for me like that, asshole," Stan says, muffled into Richie's shoulder, and Richie reaches up to stick his hand into Stan's summer-light curls because he'd lost the chance for thirty years. 

"Wait 'till I fall in love with you, Stan the Man, then come back to me," Richie jokes half-heartedly. It mostly falls flat, but Stan laughs wetly into his shirt anyways.

Richie extracts himself from everyone else, scooting back and sideways on the bed until his back hits the windowsill, then he hugs his knees to his chest and sniffles. "Sorry." He says again, nasally.

His eyes drop to his hands when they all start exchanging concerned glances between each other, because Richie hates pity. Everyone goes back more or less to where they were before, except Stan, who scoots over and sits at Richie's side, his back pressing into the windowsill, too, their sides pressed together.

Richie shoots Stan a thankful glance, and Stan smiles tight-lipped back.

"S-s-s-so," Bill says, loudly. "I think we can all agree we buh-believe him now, right?" Murmurs of assent ripple through the room. "The next c-c-course of action would be sending him back, right?"

"Shouldn't we also be worried about all the awful stuff that's gonna happen? Like Eddie and Stan?" Bev adds, sending both of the boys a glance.

Richie looks up at Eddie, too, and finds him staring openly at Richie, looking partly scared, and partly deep in thought, but mostly unreadable.

 _Of course,_ Richie thinks dryly to himself. _Of course he's a homophobe and he hates me. Why not, right? What the fuck else would he be? In love with_ me _?_

A tiny little sob fluttered out of Richie's chest, small enough to go unnoticed. The other Losers kept talking, but it was becoming white noise to Richie, and he twisted his head away to bury his face in Stan's shoulder, who took up rubbing calming circles into his upper back.

"Richie," someone says, and he turns to look, not lifting his head. His cheek was pressing into the tear-damp spot on Stan's polo sleeve and he didn't care. 

"What?" He croaks, trying not to look like he'd been crying this whole time, even though it was obvious he was.

It was Mike. "You said I knew stuff? Like, ritual stuff?" 

"It didn't work," Richie says sullenly. 

"No, I know, but maybe something else old me learned could help us. Do you know how I knew that stuff?"

Richie finally sits up, taking a deep breath to still himself. "Uh, the library, you were a librarian. And Native Americans, and drugs."

Bill grumbles something that sounds suspiciously connected to his older self getting drugged, but Mike ignores this and nods. "Okay, well, we'll go with the library from now." He turns his dark-eyed gaze away from Richie, who sags back into Stan's side with a sigh, and looks at Ben. "Ben, would you help me? You've gone there a lot, so."

"Sure!" Ben responds happily, smiling at Mike.

Bev tilts her head to the side, looking thoughtful as she muses, "Would you guys look under _I_ for _It_ or _P_ for _Pennywise_?"

Richie chuckles weakly, and Ben chirps back merrily, "Oh, we'll probably look under 'Derry History' and any records of Native Americans around here."

"A-anything Mike or drug related needs to stay away from m-m-me," Bill pipes up jokingly, and Mike's lips twist into a sheepish smile, as if he's ashamed of his future self.

"Sorry, Bill."

"I'm kuh-kuh-kidding, Mike," Bill says easily. "Whatever you had to d-do, I guess. If you guys are going to the l-library, me, Bev, and Stan could go luh-look around town and the barrens? For It, I m-mean."

"Sure, but I'm not going into the sewers alone," Bev says, eyeing Bill warily. Bill shakes his head adamantly but doesn't try to talk again. 

"I'm staying with Richie." Stan says suddenly. "I'm taking him to his house, and he's going to eat some soup and then go to sleep."

Richie snorts. "Okay, mom."

"Shut the fuck up and let me love you," Stan snaps back without any real heat. That brings tears swimming into Richie's eyes again, so he doesn't respond.

"Ben, let's go before it gets dark," Mike says, pushing off the wall and reaching down to help Ben up with a hand the other gladly accepts. "There's probably not gonna be any danger but the police don't know that yet, so there's still a curfew."

Ben just nods and waves bye to everyone before the two head out, talking about nerdy stuff, probably.

"We should go too, Bill," Bev says. She'd been watching Ben leave with an eagle eye, and as happy as Richie is for his friends, he's also desperately envious. "If you want to look at the Barrens and the town we need to bike really fast."

The two leave, after Bill tells Richie and Stan that they can stay here for as long as they need. 

With only three people in the room, the silence stringing taut between Richie and Eddie is painfully obvious. 

Stan nudges Richie softly, asking in a low voice, "Your place or mine?"

Richie laughs once, almost nervously. "Stop trying to get into my pants, Staniel, my heart is reserved." He even places a hand over his chest in a Southern belle way, and only realizes his slip-up when Eddie inhales sharply, across the room. He drops his hand like it's burned. "Sorry." He mutters, not looking at Eddie. "Mine. I'm probably gonna throw up and then pass out, though, I'm fucking exhausted, so you can just go home, or go help if you want."

"I'm staying with you." Stan says back instantly, gentle but firm. 

"You never cared this much about me when I was thirteen," Richie says back teasingly, but he is also genuinely confused, and it shows.

Stan is silent for a couple seconds as he slides off the bed and reaches a hand back for Richie. Richie takes it and lets Stan help him up, and when they're both standing Richie notices that Stan's lips are curled into a rueful smile. "I did." He says. "I was bad at showing it. I'm gonna be better, after.. well. I don't know how long you'll be here, but. I do love you, and I'll show you, okay?"

"Okay, Stan the Man," Richie says back, sniffling again pathetically. His voice sounds wet and sad, but he's not really in control of that right now. "No complaints from the crowd."

"Then let's go." Stan says, not hesitating to grab Richie's hand and start walking towards the door.

Richie has a quip about hand-holding and gay shit on the tip of his tongue when Eddie says, quiet but razor-sharp behind him, "Wait." Richie stops in his tracks. Stan stops too, turning to look at Eddie with something like a warning in his eyes.

Richie turns slowly, not letting go of Stan's hand and even going so far to squeeze it for reassurance. He wants to be casual and cool, say something like, _"What's popping, Spaghetti?"_ but when he opens his mouth what comes out is a low and strained, "What?"

“Can we talk?”

Richie is scared to open his mouth, because the hard lump in his throat feels suspiciously like his heart, and if he goes to speak it might just tumble out. Instead, he just nods, and sits down Indian style in front of Eddie. Stan, who hasn't let go of Richie's hand, is tugged down with him. Richie can feel Stan looking at him, and see it out of the corner of his eye, but he drops his gaze to his lap and stares resolutely, picking at the hem of his jeans. 

The silence is loaded, and it drapes over them for what has to be at least one long, suffocating minute.

"You said I married my mother," Eddie says, suddenly, breaking the silence with an almost audible violent _snap._ "Was that a 'your mom' joke? What did you mean?"

Richie sighs, long and suffering, and resists the urge to scrub his hand across his face. He thinks about Eddie's- Adult Eddie's -pinched face when his phone buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed again. He thinks about the duffel bag, which had to be the size of Richie's bag which held everything he needed, full of little bottles, pills rattling inside in a telling way. He thinks about the big, expensive ruby on Adult Eddie's finger, and the way he twisted it anxiously, and Richie wants to put his fist through the wall. "No. It was like, to my knowledge, a fricken' carbon copy of your mother. She made you take like three dozen pills a day, still, you forgot you're not sick, some girl named- M-" Damn, what had the caller ID said? "Myra." He feels a little less guilty about peeking now, though the idea of Eddie's _wife_ calling him still makes him vaguely sick.

"My mom's friend's daughter?" Eddie whispers, looking horrified. "I hate her."

"Guess you forgot." Richie says, with a short laugh. Nothing about this is funny.

It's silent for a few moments, then Eddie asks, in a totally see-through voice of fake calm, "Would you have been a better husband? If I'd- if I'd married you."

Richie lets out a dry little sob, taking his glasses off and putting them somewhere off to the side. He shoves the heels of his palms into each eye as if that would force out the loud buzzing in his head, like static. "Fuck, Eds. Why are you doing this to me?" He laughs, but it twists into something wet and pained halfway through. "I would- I would have tried so fucking hard, dude. I'd keep my stupid mouth shut forever if you asked since you think I'm so fucking annoying, you gotta know I'd-" He breaks off then, too afraid of being vulnerable. It twists his chest and clogs his throat, makes his fingers shake, makes his eyes burn. He's used to it, he's lived with it his entire life, always covered himself up, always had that little voice _Don't let them see you! Don't let them look too hard!_ but that doesn't make it hurt any less when it rushes up his throat. 

"You'd what?" Eddie prompts. Richie can't bear to look at him. He doesn't know if he'll ever be able to without feeling so raw and heartbroken. 

_Don't see me,_ Richie thinks. _Don't look at me, in case you hate what you find, please._

Nevertheless, Richie drops his hands, slots his glasses back onto his face with minimal Velma-esque fumbling, and makes direct eye contact. Eddie's face is unreadable, but that's a suitcase to be unpacked later. "I'd do anything for you," He says, quiet, soft, so sad. 

"You really love me?" Eddie asks in a small voice. He's glaring at his hands, and he flinches slightly when Richie keeps staring. And staring.

Richie sighs heavily, looking over at Stan for support. Stan is silent, and the look in his eyes is also, big surprise, unreadable. 

_Welcome to my new game show! Can you tell what type of trauma your life-long best friends are experiencing, or are you too fucking stupid and useless?_

Turning back to Eddie, Richie says, simply, "Yeah." He sounds so sad, even to himself, that it's surprising. He flinches when it comes out of his mouth. All those years, brick after brick in his emotional walls so he would never have to be this vulnerable, this pathetic and exposed, and little fuckin' Eddie Kaspbrak waltzes in and breaks that shit down with a palmful of questions and a few scared expressions. "I'm sorry, Eds. I can't just.. I can't just turn it off." _Even if it makes you hate me,_ goes unsaid, but the unspoken words leave a gross stain in the air. 

Suddenly, Stan lurches to his feet, and yanks Richie up by the shirt. "We're leaving." He says, brown curls bouncing into his eyes when he shoots Eddie a stern look, that he definitely inherited from his dad. "Rich, wait outside, I need to talk to Eddie."

"Wait outside?" Richie parrots, eyes wide and frowning at Stan. "What the fuck? I'm older than both of you, I can handle goddamn emotions-"

"Wait. Outside." Stan glares at Richie so hard it burns through his face, but it doesn't seem angry at him, exactly.

"Okay, dad, geez," Richie mutters, backing out the door. Stan shuts it, and muffled voices instantly start behind the smooth brown wood. "Fuck." Richie mutters, shoving his hands in his pocket, foot _tap-tap-_ tapping. 

After only a couple of moments, he leans in and presses his ear to the door, thinking, _Fuck it, I'm out of dignity today anyways._

 _"What the fuck is your problem?"_ Stan is ranting. _"You really think he needs this stress right now? He just fuckin', time traveled, he's trying to save our sorry asses and this is how you act?"_

_"I don't-! I'm not gonna fucking apologize, Stan. You're not the one he- he says-"_

_"Is it really that fucking terrible that he's in love with you?"_

Oh, fuck that. Richie reels backwards, so fast he bumps into the decorative little table across from the door, making the potted fern rattle and his lower back ache slightly. He does not need to hear Eddie say it. The look on his fucking face was enough. Richie didn't need to hear it in words, no thank you, ma'am.

He ends up settling down against the hallway wall with his knees pulled up to his chest, listening to the clock tick and just waiting. 

After a good six and a half minutes, the door swings inwards and Stan steps out, obviously angry but feigning composure. 

"Let's go," Stan says, reaching down with a hand Richie accepts, and he lets himself get hauled up. "I was being serious about the soup."

"Soup? I'm not a homeless man, Staniel, I am a time traveler." Richie snips, pretending to be annoyed so he has a reason to stare resolutely at Stan, pretending he's not _not_ looking at Eddie, pretending he's a-okay. Stan rolls his eyes, and it's so familiar Richie's heart hurts. "Hey- man, uhm, not to be too serious, but. You know I was serious, right?" Richie rambles, grabbing Stan's wrist. "Please. Please don't kill yourself. There's so many other options, and I know I sound like a self-help pamphlet, but, please?" He winces, shutting his mouth. It sounded so much better in his head, kind of.

The corner of Stan's mouth quirks into a kind of bitter smile. "I know. I won't. Let's go now, 'kay?"

Richie just nods, and allows it when Stan moves his hand down from his wrist so their fingers are interlaced, and he follows when Stan leads him away. 

The whole time, he can feel Eddie in the doorway, watching, a burning presence. 

_If only I had kept my fucking mouth shut,_ Richie thinks as he walks down the sidewalk, in the direction of Richie's house. _There were so many other ways to prove it, and I had to go with the fuckin' hard L._

The walk is blissfully silent. Stan doesn't try to talk, and they only communicate once, non-verbally, when someone else walking down the street stink-eyes their hands. Richie tries to pull away, but Stan holds tighter, and Richie wordlessly squeezes back, feeling his eyes burn.

When they get to Richie's house, Richie is already feeling absolutely dead on his feet. He trudges up the stairs like a zombie, and collapses onto his bed instantly, his face buried into the cigarette-smoke, shitty cologne smelling pillow.

"No soup," Richie slurs into the grey pillowcase. "Sleep."

"Then scoot over, bitch."

Richie rolls over, reluctantly un-starfishing, and curls up with his back to the windowsill, pulling his knees up and hugging his middle. Stan climbs into the bed without preamble, pulling the thick comforter over both of them. 

Afternoon sunlight is slanting through Richie's open blinds, creating slats over the side of Richie's face, hot and bright. His mind and body are both thoroughly exhausted (fighting It twice, Eddie, basically everything that happened- all weights that are piled up over him and crushing him down). He falls asleep in moments. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me reading ya’ll’s comments: 😳😳😳
> 
> no but fr you guys make my heart go 💗 thank you so much!!!


	4. Eddie

Eddie isn’t sure what he had thought being dead would feel like- while he’d given quite a bit of thought to the act of dying, he’d never gone past that -but he’s sure that this wasn’t it.

He’s sitting in a theater. He recognizes it, instantly, as the Capitol Theater. 

The screen is black, but when he looks to the left, light is reflecting in the thick lens glasses of the boy sitting next to him. 

“Richie?” Eddie whispers. 

“This movie’s pretty great, huh?” Richie whispers back, without looking at Eddie, shoveling some popcorn into his mouth. 

“But, Rich-“

“Eddie, shh,” Someone else whispers. Eddie turns to the right, and it’s Bill- red hair, perfect face, and that undeniable aura of goodness, leadership, so strong that it was always a surprise no one else ever felt it. “Talk after the movie.”

The light across Bill’s face jumps suddenly, as if a light turned on in the film.

Eddie looks at the dark screen, then turns to Richie again. For a moment, he just stares, entranced. 

Richie looks around seventeen. His curls are dark, wild, and untamed, falling over his sharp jawline in a bedhead slash movie star way, and his eyes are big and blue under his glasses. He turns to look at Eddie. “Just watch the movie, Eddie.” Richie says. “This is your favorite scene.”

Eddie blinks, and turns, and the screen is still dark and blank. “I don’t understand-“ He starts to say, but suddenly the screen jumps into action, and flickering across it in green-ish tones is the cistern.

He watches. It roars, Mike shouts, Richie yells.

Eddie sucks in a tight breath when the Richie on screen gets caught in the Deadlights. 

“Damn!” Bill says softly, to his right. Eddie doesn’t look, too horrifyingly mesmerized by Richie’s eyes, white and glazed, a stream of blood trickling upwards from his nose. “What a twist.” Bill continues, which is something he’d used to say as a kid- Bill would always point out shit in the movies they watched, saying things like “cinematic poetry” and “literary genius”. 

“Rich-“

Eddie cuts off as an arm drapes over his shoulders, and he can feel Richie’s breath puffing hotly against his neck as Richie leans in. Eddie-on-screen is throwing the fencepost like a javelin into It’s mouth as Richie presses a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses from Eddie’s collar to his jaw.

“Richie..” Eddie sighs, shivering under his touch. He’s starting to feel hot, and desperate, but it’s rivaled by his fear and confusion. The two emotions are butting heads like bulls in his stomach, his body tossing and turning between feeling burning hot and ice cold.

“If you hadn’t moved away,” Richie whispers into Eddie’s overheating skin, “I would have taken you out on dates every day in high school, and crawled through your window every night, and kissed you during every movie and tell you I loved you every chance I got.” 

“But he doesn’t love me,” Eddie breathes. Guilt kickstarts in his stomach, shame starting to make him feel sick. Is this purgatory? Maybe his sins and good deeds evened out so much that whatever god exists said ‘fuck it’ and gave Eddie both heaven and hell; horrors playing in front of him, but Richie at his side, whispering that he loves him between kisses. “You can’t-“

 _Is this fair to Richie’s memory?_ Eddie thinks, desperately, shaking again as the Richie sitting next to him sucks a kiss into the sensitive skin behind Eddie’s ear.

“I do, I love you,” Richie says, softly, and Eddie’s hands are shaking, fuck.

Eddie-on-screen is speared through with an interdemensional demon’s claw. Eddie lifts his hand up, pressing it to his chest.

“I died,” Eddie whispers. His eye twitches, once. “I died.”

Richie’s hand comes up and gently pushes Eddie’s back down into his lap, where he lifts the hem of Eddie’s polo and slides up his skin, settling on the healthy, unbroken expanse of Eddie’s chest. Eddie lets out a shaky breath.

The feel of Richie’s big hand moving up his skin, his thumb rubbing circles into his chest, makes heat coil in Eddie’s gut. 

“Stop it,” Eddie says, pushing Richie’s arm off his shoulders. “This isn’t- fair to him, stop.”

The warmth vanishes entirely, and suddenly Eddie is alone. He presses a hand to his chest again, still shivering, but suddenly cold.

“Sorry.” Richie says, but Eddie’s alone. His voice comes from the speakers overhead. “Just trying to make you comfortable while you wait.”

“While I wait for what?” Eddie shouts, but as he speaks, the screen changes. 

It shows a rainy street. Classical music floats around Eddie, eerie and beautiful.

“Oh, God,” Eddie whispers, cupping his hands over his mouth as he watches.

The ‘film’ goes on, and on, pieces of Eddie’s life cut and stitched grossly together to make this- a movie. 

Eddie almost throws up when poor little Georgie’s arm is bitten off, but he only starts crying when Richie shows up, thirteen years old and making your mom jokes like his life depended on it. 

He sits still and watches the whole thing, without looking away, even the parts that make him cringe (his own longing looks at Richie, gore, It drooling and cackling over them), the parts that he’d had nightmares about for twenty-seven years (the leper, his arm breaking, Neibolt house), and the parts that make him dizzy when he sobs (Richie, Richie, Richie). 

When the screen fades to black, Eddie sighs in relief, his hands unclenching where he’d been white-knuckling the armrest. It only had to have been two, three hours, but it felt like lifetimes. 

Then, just as soon as it ended, the screen is bright again. Eddie freezes, horror dawning over him. He just wants it to end- fuck, he’s so tired. His face is wet, but it’s not over.

The second movie- _God, what a joke. “Second movie”._ Eddie laughs once, a hysterical sound. The second movie starts with Mike talking about memory or some poetic bullshit. Eddie doesn’t cry when that stranger dies, but he does feel misery, and a twinge of some strange emotion. _Gay asthmatic spitfire. Pennywise has a type, huh?_ Eddie thinks, laughing without humor under his breath.

The ‘movie’ continues, and continues, and for the most part, Eddie is able to lean back and disassociate. He doesn’t need to watch all the same shit that he watched just hours ago. When it gets to the part where Richie got caught in the Deadlights, Eddie thinks about hands on him, and hates himself enough that he lets himself wish he hadn’t asked Richie to stop touching him, before. 

Only when he dies does Eddie sit up, watching more intently. He doesn’t know what happens next. His memory consists of closing his eyes against Richie’s crestfallen face, and opening them into a dark theater. 

Anxiety suddenly flares in his chest. What if they hadn’t lived? What if everyone else had died too? What if that was the real Richie he’d told to stop? What if It won?

 _What if, what if, what if._ With some difficulty, Eddie forces his thoughts down and watches. His brain still feels like static, but he watches.

They won. Eddie exhaled as he leaned back. Everyone else lives. 

He puts his feet up onto the balcony’s railing, certain that nothing else could make him shake with fear or cry from here on out. 

Then.

Then the Losers rush back to Eddie’s body (which, to be honest, Eddie himself had completely forgotten about).

He hadn’t even considered the fact that the other Losers would grieve over him. It hadn’t felt real to him yet. 

Seeing the others cry, their looks of devastation, made Eddie’s heart crack open.

But it paled in comparison to Richie’s reaction.

If it was possible to sleep here, wherever Eddie was, he’d dream of Richie’s voice screaming “We can still help him!” for-fucking-ever. 

They have to drag Richie out, away from Eddie’s body. Richie cries outside of Neibolt house, screaming for Eddie, screaming that they have to help him. Richie cries at the quarry, terrible, awful sobs that Eddie had never dreamed Richie could make.

Eddie cries, too. He wants to cover his face, but he feels obligated to watch. Instead, he just bites the inside of his cheek so hard he tastes iron in his mouth. 

The rest of it flies past on the screen. Mike and Bill, Stan’s letter, yada yada yada. 

Eddie watches Richie carve R + E into the bridge. He wrestles his crying under control, and sits silently, hands folded in his lap, waiting for it to be over.

The screen finally fades to black, and Eddie’s eye twitches again as he waits. 

“Is that real?” He finally yells, after minutes of silence.

“Which part?” 

Eddie turns to the left, and Richie’s sitting there again. This time he’s thirteen. As Eddie stares, he adjusts his glasses, eyes magnified like a bug underneath. Eddie feels different, looking at Richie, after watching all the shit he went through without saying anything on a theater screen.

“Which part?” Richie asks again, folding his hands in his lap.

“All of it. Any of it.” Eddie manages to croak, finally. He looks down at his hands, which had been tiny and kid-sized when he first opened his eyes here, and he finds that at some time during the screenings he had turned into his adult self again.

“Most of it is real.” Richie says. “That’s how it should have ended.”

“Should have?” Eddie’s head whips up. “What does that mean? ‘Should have’?”

“How it would have ended, if I was any less stubborn.” Richie amends. A tiny little grin slips into the corner of his mouth. Eddie blinks, and the Richie in front of him is adult Richie. “You think I’d leave you? No way, José, you’re stuck with this ugly face for _life_.”

“I don’t understand,” Eddie twists his hands in his lap, struck dumb between hope and confusion. “Who are you?”

A frown tugs Richie’s mouth down. “Isn’t this what you want?” He asks.

“Not if- not if it’s not really Richie,” Eddie’s voice breaks, and he licks his lips anxiously.

Richie’s mouth bunches to the side, and he shrugs. “Humans are weird. Alright.” He turns suddenly into a little boy, with shaggy green hair and snow white skin. He has no pupils, and his eyes look like a galaxy. “I’d show you what I really look like, but this theater isn’t big enough,” The kid says.

“Who are you?” Eddie asks. He grabs the armrests and grips them so tightly his knuckles turn white. 

“I’m Maturin.” The kid says. “I can’t tell you too much. I need to go soon. You need to wait here, kay? Richie will come for you. Just trust him.”

“Richie’s coming?” All the breath leaves Eddie’s body in a rush. 

“Yes. You have to wait for him.” Maturin stands, stretches his arms above his head like a cat, and then looks at Eddie strangely. 

“Bye,” Maturin says. 

“Bye?” Eddie parrots back, too helplessly confused to do anything else. “Wait- wait. Does Richie- you showed me- does Richie love me?” His voice got dangerously close to cracking, but he managed to hold himself firm, just barely.

Maturin looks down at him. His eyes are just swirling galaxies, but even then he looks a cross between amused and confused. “Um, duh?” He laughs, his voice reedy and childlike. “Oh, did I not- sorry. I got so many things on my mind, yknow? And so many minds on my things...”

Maturin points at the screen, and it flickers to life. It’s showing Richie and Stan, laying in Richie’s room, sunlight from the window painted over them in golden streaks.

“Forgot. My bad. Here- what’s it called? Oh, wait, I know it. Here’s a live-stream of your Richie. You can watch ‘cause you’re dead. Please don’t throw anymore fits, I’m getting enough of that from the other ones.”

Eddie mouths ‘other ones’ as he stares at the screen. Richie is sleeping deeply, sometimes twitching. “What...”

“You’ll understand soon enough. I really got to go now.”

“Wait..” Eddie turns back to Maturin, but there’s no one there. He blinks, turns back to the screen. 

Finally, Eddie heaves a sigh and settles back into the chair, waiting for something to happen.


	5. Richie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you may have noticed the chapter count dropped from 16 to 14, and this is me rearranging the plot lines to be better! all good things
> 
> you may also notice that hanbrough is now a background in this fic and that is because i rewatched It chapter dos & the forehead touches are my new religion

Richie has just closed his eyes and fallen asleep, but he's instantly awake again. A groan slips out of his mouth, and he bats his eyes open, ready to shake Stan awake too, and complain about how shitty his body is. He stills feels exhausted, as if he hadn't slept at all.

Only, when he opens his eyes, it's not to a dirty popcorn ceiling slathered with evening sunlight, but rather a full, heavy moon surrounded by stars so tiny they look like freckles.

"What the fuck?" Richie breathes, jolting to alertness as he sits up. His blue eyes go comically wide as he takes in his surroundings. 

Granted, it's probably the prettiest surroundings he's ever had, but it was still so very wrong. How could one fall asleep in bed and wake up at the ocean?

The sand under Richie's palms is silky soft, unnaturally so, and pearly white. The miles and miles of dark water before him lap at his bare toes, and the rippling reflections of silver stars reach all the way to the horizon. 

Richie clambers up to his knees, hands braced on the soft sand. Exhaling shakily, he looks around himself, but all he can see for miles is white beach and blue water. Drawing his gaze away from the horizon, he looks down at his hands, desperate for anything familiar. The sea rolls with a wave, water and pale sea foam rushing up to kiss the sand, and the tips of Richie's pale fingers. Richie sucks in a sharp breath as he realizes the water isn't reflecting stars, the water is starry. The sea foam sparkles with silver points so bright it reminds him of the stuff he'd read that article about- what was it called? Right, bioluminescent phytoplankton. He only remembered because he'd made a _tasteful_ joke about Plankton, from Spongebob. He can't even remember the joke, now. Something about him getting a _glow_ up (haha get it? this is comedy, fuck you).

As the wave folds back on itself and floods down the sand back to sea, a purple line is left, tracing all along the beach where the sea foam had rolled the highest. Richie watches, nostrils flared, as wave after wave glides up the beach, never ending in the same place, always leaving a faint, glowing purple line. Eventually, his shock dies a little, enough so that he can lift a shaky hand and press the tip of a finger to one of the lines. Images flash across his mind 

( _Himself, age thirteen, taking an ice cream cone from Eddie's hands. It doesn't exist. Stan, Bill, Eddie and himself never meet the others; they grow older; he never tells Eddie; himself, age thirty-three, dying alone in a cold apartment from a drug overdose._ )

but he doesn't understand any of them. He pulls his hand away and touches a different line, and again he sees things, so vivid they feel like memories but so confusing

( _the sewers, thirteen years old; Bill punching him; they don't reconnect; It picks them off one by one, and he dies at the end of a spiked plastic pole in the hands of a giant Paul Bunyan statue, alone._ )

and he pulls back quickly. 

Richie rocks back onto his heels, wiping his sweaty hands against his sewer-caked jeans. "Hello?" He calls, looking around the beach again. "Is this a dream? I'd like to wake up now, pretty please, cherry on top?"

The ocean rolls. Richie scrambles backwards in an awkward crab-walk, a breathless exclamation of terror flying through his mouth as a circle of the sea lifts upwards. He's only gotten a good few feet away from the edges of the sea foam when the shell of a turtle breaches into the air. Water pours in floods down the edges of its' enormous emerald shell. Richie only manages to get a squeak of fear out. 

**_Richie Tozier._ **

"Oh my God," Richie manages.

_**You are dreaming.** _

"I- I figured, thanks," Briefly, Richie wonders how snarky he should be with a turtle literally big enough to eat Richie like a crumb, but his defense has always been sarcasm and humor, and he won't change that for a fricken' turtle. Unless it was a Ninja Turtle.

The turtle slowly swings it's head around, and one eye focuses on Richie. There's no iris, and the entire expanse is a moving galaxy. Comets streak through, stars swirling, sparkling...

_**There are matters to be discussed between us.** _

Richie can't help but scoff. "Do you mean the sewer clown? The time travel? The star-ocean? Or anything else?"

Silence. Richie thinks, _Death by turtle isn't how I imagined it, but whatever, I guess,_ then the turtle sinks into the ocean. 

"What the fuck? Hello?" Richie blurts before he can stop himself.

Something moves out in the ocean, and at first Richie thinks it's a patch of seaweed getting closer to the shore, but then it lifts up and there's a pale face beneath the mop of green, and then the whole body of a kid (thirteen, at most) power-walking out of the ocean. Sea foam clings to his snow colored skin, but his black hoodie and dark jeans are completely dry. So is his shaggy green hair. _What kind of Disney movie bullshit-_

"I have had it with you," The kid snaps, when he's close enough to be heard. He stops where the ocean stops, the sea rolling past his bare, pale ankles. He puts his hands on his hips and glares at Richie, with his big galaxy eyes. "I try to be serious for the others, act like they'd expect a god to, and they flip their shit. I act normal around the Eddie one, and he flips his shit. I don't know what you assholes want from me."

Richie opens his mouth, then closes it, finding he has no fucking clue what he would say. 

"I mean, seriously. I can't even tell if you're more freaked out now, or before. What the fuck do you want from me? I'm trying my fucking hardest." The kid says, hands flying off his hips to gesture wildly through the air. 

"I-" It comes out sounding like a frog's croak, so Richie clears his throat and tries again. Weakly, he says, "Who- who are you?"

Huffing, the kid plops down right there in the ocean, Indian style. He puts his hands on his ankles. Water rushes past him, and when it rolls away, he's still dry. "My name's Maturin. I'm a god. Kind of a big deal."

"A god?" Richie parrots, laughing. His voice has never failed him so much. Maturin raises a single green eyebrow at him.

"You got something to say about it, asshole?" Maturin snaps.

"You- I- nope."

"Good. Fuckin' humans. When I vomited the universe, I did not plan you guys, just so you know. That was evolution and science acting by itself. I would not have made any of you sorry messes." Maturin says. He reminds Richie of Eddie. They both talk like they're trying to get their words to fall over themselves like dominoes. 

Richie swallows, grimacing in a Jim Halpert way. "Gee, thanks, God." He says.

Maturin, if he had pupils, would have rolled his eyes. He settles for flipping Richie the bird. "Anyways. I don't have time for you, so I'm gonna say this quick. You're in the past 'cause you looked at the 'Deadlights', nice name by the way, real subtle, you're not strong enough to kill my brother, full offense, but to be honest I want him dead as much as you guys do he's a real pain in the turtle ass so my best bet is if you get both parts of each of you that's seen him and like wish really hard I guess. You following? Good. You're the only one who can connect both parts of the timeline. You need to stay in 1989, and you need to bring all the adult versions of your friends there too. Don't ask me how, I didn't see the Deadlights, you did. Once you do that, all fourteen of you should be able to do it. Hopefully. If not, maybe I can un-vomit the universe, and try again, I guess."

Head spinning, Richie sat up, staring dumbly at Maturin. "Uh- slight issue? Stan and Eddie are dead?"

"Yeah, obviously. Bring them out." Maturin makes a 'keep up' gesture, rolling his hand. 

"Out?" Richie parrots. His brain feels like scrambled eggs.

Maturin exhales slowly. "Listen, kid, I don't have time to teach you about the afterlife and all the alternate timelines and how they all work, so you need to just go in blindly for a little bit. I'll try to help you as much as I can. You got all that? Okay, I really have to go now."

"Wait!" Richie stumbles to his feet, ignoring how his legs feel like Jello. "Wait- just, can I ask a few questions? I'll be quick."

Maturin gives the faint impression of an eye-roll, _I guess it's in the vibes,_ Richie thinks, but nods. 

"Okay, uhm, first one, why are you in such a hurry?"

"Distracting my brother. Why do you think It hasn't eaten you by now?" Maturin answers easily.

Richie's fists clench and then unclench. "Right. Of course. Why not? Thanks, I guess. Question two; you said earlier, that you talked to Eddie? Uhm, I, he," He has to pause and physically compose himself, trying to speak without falling over his words like a lovesick middle schooler. "How- how is he?" His voice cracks, and he winces at how awkward and fumbling he sounds.

"He's fine, for being dead," Maturin says idly. He sounds entirely too casual to be discussing the love of Richie's life in the turtle vomit afterlife, but that's just Richie's opinion. "I tried to give him, like, comfort, by which I mean you and intercourse, but he refused. I showed him the movie, from the alternate timeline where you guys are just a book, and he cried a lot, so bad move, I guess. I thought it'd be funny."

Richie sways, paling. "Me?" He squeaks. "In- intercourse?"

"Yeah, dude. Are you listening to me at all?"

"I'm- gonna puke, probably." Richie admits. What the fuck does any of this mean, and why the hell would a turtle god think Eddie would take comfort in fucking Richie? 

"You can't puke in a dream." Maturin drypans. "Was that the last question, or-?"

"No, no! Uh," Struggling to reconnect his thoughts, and realizing with an awful dread that he's blushing like a school girl in front of actual God, Richie says, "Me. I'm- I'm 'Adult' me, but I'm in kid me body, so where-? Where is kid me? How do I work that out?"

Maturin laughs, standing and brushing off his knees. He was sitting in the water the whole time, but he's dry as a bone. It's starting to piss Richie off a little, but he couldn't say why. "Man, I have no fucking idea. I didn't do any of this. You'll figure it out, though, probably."

"You're a real shitty god," Richie blurts, angry and in no control of his mouth.

The shaggy-haired kid/turtle/god just shrugs. "You're a shitty comedian," He says. "And person, and lover, and friend, and you don't even have superpowers, so who's winning? I really gotta go now, though. Bye."

In the span of a second, Maturin is gone, and Richie groans, flopping down onto the sand again. "Fuck all of this," He says, and then when he closes his eyes to blink he falls asleep instantly. 

* * *

Richie wakes, for the second time, slowly. He's warm and bone-tired, still, blinking the blurry sunlight that slates through his curtains out of his eyes with a yawn. Richie rolls over, the windowsill digging into the small of his back, and he jumps a little, startled to see Stan's face inches from him.

 _Oh, yeah,_ Richie thinks, remembering the events that transpired before his depression/time-travel jet-lag nap. 

The late morning sunlight makes Stan's curls look like dark honey. He seems so peaceful sleeping, none of the faux annoyance painted over his face in neat, controlled strokes like it is when he's awake. He's cute. As an open gay (Richie hates the phrase "gay man", it makes him sound like a 40 year old repressed closet case, which he is, but still) creature, Richie will admit Stan is- was? -cute. Richie loves him, so much. He briefly considers what it would be like to be in love with Stanley.

Easier, absolutely. Stan doesn't hate Richie. Stan isn't a neurotic gremlin. Stan isn't gay, but he would take Richie's love with grace; not accepting it, per se, but not smashing it into the dirt with the nearest hammer or boot either, like a certain somepony.

Then Richie thinks about how Eddie, his Eddie, forty-three and sewer-painted and married to his mother, looked leaning over Richie with bright eyes and a brighter smile- _"I think I did it, Richie! I think I killed It!"_ -and his chest aches. 

Richie feels in his bones that he'll probably never love anyone half as much as he loves Eddie Kaspbrack, even if all he has of him are a handful of blurry memories and a few drops of blood in the cracks of his glasses. Richie is helpless against the thought that he's okay with that.

He's jerked out of his head when Stan grunts, and he smarts, realizing one of Stan's eyes is cracked open and staring at him.

"How do you uninstall heartbreak?" Richie jokes, only partially serious, and Stan rolls his eyes but laughs a little. 

"Why're awake," Stan mumbles into the pillow, closing his eye and burrowing down into it. 

"Dream," Richie says. Suddenly he shoots upwards, the memories of the dream washing over him like cold water. He has no time for a(nother) gay freakout. "Oh, shit, wait- important dream, important, wake up Stanley," He says, batting at Stan's shoulder.

Stan groans, but rolls onto his back, slapping Richie's hand away. Stan was a morning person, and he was full of energy every day at 7 a.m. on the dot, but he always got sleepy after a nap, Richie remembers. 

“Stanley Urine,” Richie hisses, reaching up to put both hands on Stan’s cheeks and shake his head back and forth. “We have no time for you to be adorable, there are important matters at fin!”

Stan groans, again, long and loud, and tears Richie’s hands off his face. “I fuckin’ hate you,” He mumbles, without opening his eyes. “‘s your fault ‘m sleeping in the f’rst place.”

He lets go of Richie’s hands and pushes them away, personally offended at them existing in the first place, but he also sits up slowly and leans against the headboard. 

“I had a turtle dream,” Richie says. “It’s about It, we need to get everyone in the same room, so we know what we have to do.” 

“I’m tired,” Stan says, opening his eyes finally to glare at Richie, only to wince at the sunlight. 

Richie can’t help but smile. “I’m sorry, my liege- of course your nap takes priority over the sewer clown demon trying to kill us all.”

Stan’s too tired to beep Richie, but he rolls his eyes and scoffs. “Fuck you. Let’s go.”

Richie scrambles over Stan’s legs and almost falls off the bed, barely managing to get his coltishly long legs underneath himself in time. Usually describing legs as ‘coltish’ is for whores or models, but Richie’s pretty sure there can be an exception made in his case. 

“Goddamn,” He mutters, steadying himself, “why are my legs so long? I look like a horse.”

“You expect me to believe it’s different when you get older?” Stan says with a scoff as he swings his legs off the bed and stands as well. 

Richie snorts. “No, but by then I know how to fuckin’ use them.”

Evidently deeming that Richie wasn’t worthy of an answer, Stan crosses the room and walks out the door. 

“Rude! I was talking.” Richie yells after him. Stan says something about how he’s always talking, and Richie grins as he lopes ungracefully after him. 

“I’m calling everyone.” Stan says, already at the phone when Richie stumbles down the stairs. “Go clean yourself up, you look like a crackhead.”

“Yessir,” Richie says, saluting so fast he smacks himself in the forehead. Stan mutters something under his breath as he dials, but doesn’t share.

Richie turns back up the stairs and into his room, taking a moment to absorb the unreality of it. He never thought he’d see this room again, but lo and behold, it looks exactly the same as it used to. “Jesus,” Richie murmurs in an undertone, picking his way through the laundry piles and comics scattered over the floor to his dresser.

The clothes he peels off are damp and smelly, and Richie makes a face as he realizes he slept in them. Muttering some more about fucking sewers and fucking clowns, Richie grabs some random clothes from his dresser and throws them on. He ends up in black ripped jeans and a grey tee, and he hesitates for only a second before pulling a loud pink Hawaiian shirt over the tee. He’d stopped wearing Hawaiian prints, specifically, in high school, but he’d always kept the ‘loud’ trait in his wardrobe. Anyways, he’s feeling nostalgic right now. 

His shoes are wet, so he swaps into his spare tennies, going sockless since he couldn’t find any clean ones, and then he deems himself mostly presentable and crosses the hallway into the bathroom.

Richie takes one look in the mirror and instantly takes it back.

“Holy shit,” He says, loudly, using one pointer finger to drag his eye down. “I do look like a crackhead.”

His eyes have black circles, and they’re puffy and red; his face is painted with all sorts of shit from the sewers; and his hair is so greasy he actually considers a shower. 

“We’re going to Bill’s house again,” Stan yells from downstairs, “hurry the fuck up, we need to leave five minutes ago.”

Shaking his head, Richie settles for flipping the faucet on, pumping some shampoo into his hand, and sticking his head into the sink. He bumps the back of his hand against the faucet several times as he massages shampoo into his thick hair, but by the time he towels it off and shakes it out like a dog, it looks slightly better. 

“I’m coming,” He shouts, turning the water off. He takes the stairs two at a time, and finds Stan waiting by the door, arms crossed. He looks at Stan, damp and sewer-y still, and winces. “You wanna borrow some clothes, dude?”

“Not in the deepest pit of Hell,” Stan answers easily, opening the door, “we’re stopping by my place on the way.”

“Alright. You the man, Stan the Man.”

The walk to Bill’s only takes fifteen minutes, including Stan’s pit stop, but Richie and Stan are still the last ones to get there. 

Everyone except for Bill and Bev have taken showers, and everyone has changed clothes. Mike is wearing a red flannel and pair of jeans that are obviously Bill’s, and so is Beverly, which makes sense. Mike’s farm is pretty far, and Bev almost killed her dad, so. Mike also appears to be blushing, but it’s hard to tell with his complexion. Either way, Richie files this away, thinking, _Interesting._

“What’s this for, R-Richie?” Bill asks as soon as Richie steps into the room. 

“Sit down, everyone, it’s a long story,” Richie says, even though everyone is sitting. Stan sprawls out on Bill’s bed. “So, I had this dream, right?” 

He briefs them all with the important parts, leaving out a few choice details (Eddie), and when he finishes, they’re all still just staring. 

“Okay, so fix it,” Ben says, when nobody else speaks. “He said you need to get the adult us’s here, right? Go do it.”

“Benny boy, this is my first go at time travel, okay, I don’t exactly have a PhD.” Richie waves a hand in the air, eventually settling on running it through his hair, trying to exert his manic energy. He needs his fucking ADHD pills, like, yesterday. “I don’t know how.”

“Maybe it has something to do with dreams?” Beverly suggests. “I mean... or the Deadlights?”

“I’m not getting caught in the Deadlights again,” Richie snaps, instantly.

Bev raises her hands as if surrendering. “Okay, calm down. It was just an idea.”

“Besides, can you imagine? ‘Oh Mr. Pennywise sir, I know that you want to eat me, but maybe instead you can toast me in your mouth-lights so I can kill you? Thaaaanks.’ Not happening.” Richie shakes his head adamantly.

“Maybe if you said ‘please’, Richie.”

The sweet-sour growl originates from Bill’s closet, and the palmful of words has each and every Loser scrambling as far as possible from it. 

“Oh, fuck,” Richie says. As the closet doors inch open, he puts himself in front of the others, watching It’s face peek out with distaste. “Fuck off, ya oily cunt, Oi’m havin’ a chat.” 

“You want to see the Deadlights, Richie?” It asks. Only the fingers of It’s gloved hand, curled around the door’s edge, and a single blue eye can be seen. “Aaask niicelyyy...”

“Are ya deaf, mate? Get the fuck out of ‘ere.” Someone tugs sharply at Richie’s arm, a frantic but hushed “ _Rich!_ ” billowing against his ear, but he ignores it. Dropping the Voice (even he didn’t know what accent he was going for, honestly), he says, “Seriously, man, fuck off.”

“That’s not very nice,” It says. It’s hand slides down the door, the one visible blue eye lowering until It’s about a head shorter than Richie. The hand pulls back into the darkness, and the eye melts into a warm brown. “Please don’t be mean to me, ‘Chee,” It says in Eddie’s voice; soft, sweet, and trembly. Richie inhales sharply. “I’ll never love you if you’re mean to me, yknow.”

Richie’s hands curl into shaky fists at his side. He doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want to see the others’ faces, doesn’t want to see how Eddie reacts to It’s fucking stunt. 

He hates that It can use Eddie against him, but more than that, he hates how weak It twists his voice to sound. He focuses on the anger, burying his fear under layers and layers of hatred. 

“Out the window,” Richie snaps, pushing the others back towards it. The door was too close to the closet, and they had to leave. “Eddie first, fuckin’ go!” He wastes only a second to glance back at them, making sure, watching a steely-faced Bill usher a pale Eddie out the window onto the slanted roof outside. 

He turns back to the closet, planting his feet and glaring, daring that bitch Pennywise to peek out again.

“Not staying to play with the clown?” Pennywise asks, his long white fingers appearing again, curling one by one around the door frame. 

“No, we’re not,” Richie snaps back, “and I wish you’d take a fucking hint that we hate you.”

The others are talking in frantic whispers, shoes skidding on roof tiles, clothes brushing against the window sills behind him.

“Richie,” Mike says, behind him, and Richie doesn’t look when someone tugs at his shirt. “We’re the last ones, we gotta go.”

Richie finally turns, then, spinning on his heel and ushering Mike towards the window. He can see the others collected at the sidewalk, shouting and waving at them. 

Mike is lifting himself up when a deafening _bang_ makes both of them jump, Mike swaying half in, half out of the window. Richie looks at Mike, staring wide-eyed at something behind Richie, then turns.

It is standing in the closet, towering, gold eyes sparkling. The closet door is broken in two pieces, strewn on Bill’s bed. Black sludge trudges past It’s feet, sizzling acidicly as it touches the carpet. 

“Running away, boys?” It giggles. Drool collects in heavy beads on It’s scarlet red lower lip, and when it drips off, it hisses as it hits the sludge. “Stay here, with me, this is where you belong, in the closet, dirty boys...”

Mike squeaks something breathlessly, but Richie’s too busy staring at the sludge to take notice. 

“Fuck, fuck,” Richie chants, twirling away and pushing at Mike’s shoulder. “Fuckin’ _go_!”

Mike gasps but scrambles out onto the sloped roof, hands scrabbling at the tiles.

The tar sizzles as it reaches the heels of Richie’s beat up tennies. He hauls himself up onto the windowsill, a sob shuddering his chest- _stings, burns, hot, HOT_ -at the feeling of the sludge on his skin, acid and hot. 

He vaults messily onto the roof, and Mike has to throw out a hand that Richie barely catches to not fall. Breathing heavily, they both look back into the bedroom, but it’s empty and peaceful. The floor isn’t tar, and the closet doors are intact and shut. 

“Fuck,” Richie breathes. He twists his head around and kicks his foot up to look at his heel; the fabric of the shoes are ratty and dirty, but bear no sign of burning. “Fuck.”

“Come on,” Mike says, pulling Richie’s wrist and shuffling towards the side of the house. They both shimmy down the same pole the others had, landing with thumps on the front porch, and Richie spares no time running to the others. 

“Everyone good?” He asks, sweeping gaze scanning all of them. They nod, seeming shaken but unharmed. Richie releases a breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Great.” A shaky hand runs through his hair as he looks back at the window. “Why can’t we ever have a normal hang out?”


	6. Mike

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> its been like ten years
> 
> hi

After the appearance of Maturin, hours ticked past. Probably.

Conversation ebbed and flowed sporadically, leaping from topic to topic with the grace of a three-legged porcupine. Mike didn't contribute much, but he listened, whether the others be talking about mortality and Richie's probabilities of surviving or the new Netflix original. 

At one point, during a stretch of silence- silence as in no conversation; there was still Beverly throwing rocks at the cavern walls, Bill's occasional under-the-breath murmurs, and Ben humming Perry the Platypus's theme song on loop -Mike pushed up from the floor into a stand, and walked out of the cavern's center. 

Though it had felt like hours passing by, none of the Losers had stood, or looked around, and Mike's legs were starting to hurt. 

He hiked up to where they'd laid Eddie to rest

( _to die_ )

and stared at the bloodstains for a minute or two. Then he just started walking laps around the cistern, finding the way his legs got reacquainted with movement inanely satisfying. For as long as he could remember, which was very long, Mike had walked away frustration. After a particularly upsetting experience, a fast walk could calm him down. It always felt like his annoyance seeped out of his feet into the ground, which was weird, yes, but it was more productive than anything else he could think of. This walk was no different, and slowly but surely Mike's breaths were coming deeper and easier.

Around his fifth lap, Bill dropped into stride with him. They walked half a lap in silence (Bill must have remembered Mike's tendency for the sport, and even the idle thought of a _shared memory_ made Mike's heart feel electrocuted.) 

"Penny for your thoughts?" Bill asks finally, and though Mike can see him looking out of the corner of his eye, but Mike stares forward resolutely.

Mike thinks about Richie, and the word ‘penny’, and what Richie would say. He almost reluctantly cracks a smile and, telling himself it’s in Richie’s honor, says, “I guess it would be _wise_ to communicate, eh?”

Bill looks surprised, then thoughtful, then exasperated in the span of a few seconds. “C’mon man, seriously.”

They pass by the jagged circle of black rock, and Mike's lips tug slightly at hearing Beverly and Ben crowing out the chorus of _Toss A Coin To Your Witcher_ far louder than necessary. He waits until they're a little farther away, so that the other two weren't quite so loud, and says, "Not thinking of much right now."

The echoes of their friend’s voices don’t cover the manic tap-tap-tap- _tapping_ of Bill’s fingers against his jeans. “You can talk to me, you know.”

Mike waves a dismissive hand. Unconsciously answering that same statement the way he would respond to an only slightly concerned neighbor over the years, he says, “Of course I know.”

A hand latches onto his arm and stops him dead in his tracks, and Mike turns to see Bill almost glowering, blue eyes so vividly intense Mike feels dizzy. “Mike. I mean you can _talk_ to me.”

A wave of memories sweeps over Mike. He’d never forgotten like the others had, his memory deteriorating naturally, but the magic still had effects on him. Throughout all the years, Mike frequently caught himself trapped in vivid daydream-memories. 

Now, he sees Bill focusing those same dark, intense eyes on him, after Mike offhandedly said he really didn’t mind being the biggest target of the Losers in post-It bullying; he sees clouds swimming in the reflection of those blue pools as the two boys stretched out on Mike’s farm and cloud gazed; he sees Bill laughing, swamped in one of Mike’s big flannels, and remembers being so flustered that his throat felt thick and his face so hot he had to look away. 

Now, he feels Bill’s forehead press against his, sees how Bill has to ever so slightly lift onto his toes to reach. “You understand, right? I’m _here_ now.”

Mike can’t breathe. He’s so choked up, he’s so close to crying, he missed him _so much_ -

“Heya, boys!”

Ben and Bev’s singing cuts off abruptly. Bill jerks away as if burned, jumping, and Mike’s head swivels to the source. 

Thirteen year old Richie is swaggering down the rocks, smiling like a hot shot, eyes big as bugs in their thick frames. Another wave of nostalgia washes over Mike and makes his stomach feel sticky, like butterflies flitting around down there got trapped in syrup against his ribs. 

“Rich?” Bill calls, sounding genuinely flabbergasted.

Richie smiles and shoots him two big thumbs up. “You ready to catch a lift back to 1989, via the Tozier Train?”

Ben and Bev make joyful whoops from inside the rocks, and Mike hears them scrambling out towards them. 

Something isn’t sitting right in Mike’s stomach.

Little Richie looks at Mike and beams. That smile was too big, those eyes too bright. 

“Not right,” Mike mutters, flailing out blindly for Bill’s hand.

“Who’s first, huh? I’ve almost got this time travel stuff down to a tee, I tell ya.”

Bill starts walking towards Richie, smiling, shaking off Mike’s hand. “I’ll go,” Bill says easily. “I’ve been feeling nostalgic lately.”

“Ey, who hasn’t?” Richie replies toothily. He holds his hand out for Bill to take.

Mike’s stomach churns. The all imposing feeling of wrongness weaves knots around his core.

“Bill, wait-,” He starts to say.

Bill’s reaching out to grab Richie’s hand. The skin on Richie’s hand is pulsing, like veins are begging to be free. Is Mike the only one who sees that?

An instant before Bill’s fingers touch Richie’s, Mike football tackles him to the ground. Air wooshes where Bill had been a second ago. Beverly screams, so Mike twists up and sees big white gloved claws scraping the air. 

It smiles toothily again. Pockets of It’s cheeks open up and reveal shark rows of teeth. Pale skin turns black and flakes down onto the ground. 

“Fuck!” Mike yells, rolling back, tugging a groaning Bill with him. 

More skin rains from It/Richie’s face like black dandruff, teeth appearing in holes where it shouldn’t be; his forehead, the side of his nose. One of It/Richie’s eyes plop out and a wriggling, slimy, long black tongue pokes out of the socket and flops around It’s face, smearing dark smudgy saliva on ripped pale skin where it touches. Mike hears Ben retching behind him.

“I knew it,” Mike gasps. Bill is scrambling to his feet, so Mike lurches to his and stumbles back as fast as he can. 

“Still as scared as ever, Mikey,” It hisses from Richie’s broken, toothy face. The eye tongue flicks at his deathly pale lips. Black drool drips from his cheeks and mouth. “I just visited tiny Mike, and he almost pissed his pants, too. It never gets better, huh?”

“Fuck you,” Bill spits. Mike noticed a bead of blood on his forehead, probably from being tackled, and feels a deep strum of guilt. 

It cackles. “Little children,” It says, sing-song, “let me show you a film.”

It holds out Richie’s arms, palms up, and the skin on It’s wrists bulges and bounces. With a sick slicing sound, the skin splits, and black film comes pouring out. Razor sharp edges of film tear at It’s flesh on the way out, and it swims with red blood. Ben retches again. 

The film pools in a swirling bloody pile on the floor, and like a sci-fi hologram, images bounce out of it. It is smiling, lips crumbling and tearing, at them all.

The film shows them all, via 1989, but Mike doesn’t have these memories. It breaks down a closet, acid barks at a young Richie’s heels, the Losers scream from the sidewalk. Mike sees himself, near crying, dangling half in half out of Bill’s window. 

“Stop it!” Bev screams. A rock arcs through the hologram-esque visions, and it falters, then vanishes. 

It glares at Bev, then calmly lifts his hands and bites through the film, which topples slimily to the ground and leaves gaping red holes in It’s wrists. Blood smears on it’s broken, crumbling lips, sliced at by the razor sharp film. It’s nose caves in and leaks black sludge down It’s chin. It doesn’t look like Richie at all anymore. Ben retches some more. Mike feels like just telling him to either shut the fuck up or stop looking already. 

“What the fuck, man,” Mike says, voice cracking like a bonfire. 

“Not even Bill could write this,” Ben adds weakly from behind.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Mike sees Bill twist his head around to look at Ben. “Is that an insult?” Bill asks, sounding slightly offended. “I could so. _Dark green light caught in It’s yellowing teeth, pooling like slime. The beast roared deep in it’s broken throat, the skin pulsing and oozing sludge with the sound._ ”

“ _The sounds of Ben throwing up again made them all shiver,_ ” Mike adds.

Bev and Ben laugh, only a little nervously, and Bill tosses Mike a playfully sour look that might have been a little too fond. 

“Did you come up with that on the spot? That was good, man,” Ben says. His voice sounds a little weak, but whose wouldn’t in the situation?

Bill shrugs humbly, saying, “I told you. I could totally write this.”

Mike glances at It surreptitiously. It doesn’t seem as imposing anymore; just a slight, subtle change. Realization flashes in Mike’s stomach. _Keep it going,_ he thinks, desperately, as he says with fake confidence, “You could write this scene, but could you come up with it, Big Bill?”

From behind Bill, Bev makes wild eye contact with Mike. He tries to convey as much as possible that this was the good thing to do. 

“Probably not,” Bill admits toothily. He flaps his hand towards It, as if It is an afterthought, barely a mention in the conversation. Mike almost thinks he sees It slump down a little where It stands. “I mean, nobody expected the film thing, right? And the one liner beforehand- cinematic poetry, I tell you.”

Ben laughs loudly. He seems caught off guard by it. “That’s right! You used to say that all the time,” He says between hearty chuckles.

Bill crinkles his nose, but he’s smiling. “I have to know this stuff.” 

“You used to say that at every dramatic one liner, Billy. Not every badass quote is cinematic poetry.” Mike says.

Mike shoots Bev wide eyes as Bill laughs, and thankfully, she gets the hint. “Y-yeah,” She says nervously. “You wouldn’t know real cinematic poetry if it slapped you in the face.”

“I have been slapped in the face with cinematic poetry,” Bill retorts smartly. “Your mom has a mean backhand.”

Laughs echoed throughout the cistern; a thunderstorm from Ben and Beverly,

( _his voice rumbling like deep thunder, hers the pale, fluttering lightning_ )

and a raucous chorus from Bill and Mike.

“I don’t know if that’s an insult or not,” Bev says, one hand covering her mouth and one on her chest. 

“You should really just leave the mom jokes to Richie.” Ben says, almost chidingly, and Bill flips him the bird, except he uses his ring finger instead of his middle.

“Haha,” Bill says. “Laugh it up. Who else here has movies made of their books, huh?”

“Horror, not comedy.” Bev reminds him. “Stay in your lane, grandpa.”

Mike checks surreptitiously at It, and finds empty air.

“Guys,” He says, and the others’ words fall, dead, from their lips. “It’s gone.”

They all look over, surprised. Ben stoops down and touches the ground where bloody, slimy film had lay like snakes.

“I forgot about that,” Bill admits, rubbing his neck sheepishly.

That, of course, sends Beverly into a crowing chorus of “I Want It That Way” that everyone can’t help but join in on. In a matter of minutes, they’re joyful again, lounging on back stone like obsidian under a sky of jagged stone.

It’s strange; while they were together, they had almost forgotten to be afraid. 


End file.
